Yahoo Offers Olympic Search Shortcuts

As the Olympics get going, we couch potatoes can only hope that tracking the events is easier than participating in them.  Yahoo’s trying to do its part by introducing Olympic-themed search shortcuts.

Curious about the overall medal count?  Search for "Olympics medal count," and, as things stand right now, you’ll see that Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, and a few other countries are tied with zero.

Or perhaps you’re interested in a certain athlete.  In some cases, it appears that typing a person’s name will net you things like their vital statistics, competition schedule, and quick links to related news and results.

On the Yahoo Search Blog, Yuko Kamae writes, "Please note that many of these shortcuts won’t begin working until the games kick off in Beijing, but we just wanted to let you sports fans know before the mania sets in."

She also states, "With the Olympics shortcut, users can also play the news cast or interview video from Yahoo! Sports without leaving the search results page.  And if you want to find out more information on a given topic, we’ll of course include links to the relevant content on Yahoo! Sports as part of the shortcut.  Try it with ‘Olympics 2008′ and click on the ‘Videos’ link."

The shortcuts are a neat little trick that should please searchers as well as direct more traffic towards Yahoo’s properties.